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Oh, sure, I agree, the more of the book available before purchase, the better.
Maybe "ad hominem" isn't the right term when no names are given, but I think you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and he's being pretty abusive toward anyone who doesn't currently agree with his position. It's fun to read if you already agree with him, but not likely to win converts among the skeptics.
On the other hand, I think his suggested "experiment" is inspired.
I myself am thinking of trying to get Google (or somebody) to create a standard, open format variation that inserts text ads between chapters, pays the author (and charges the advertiser) per download, per page view (tracked while offline and uploaded at next connection), and/or per click-through. Then authors could simply post their books and actually hope they get passed around through filesharing networks. I'm not a huge fan of advertising, in general, but this seems to me more likely to work than other schemes, especially DRM. (Particularly if the ad server would have enough sense to make the ads relevant, e.g. for books by the same or similar authors. Hm. Maybe Amazon could do this better.)
Thoughts?
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